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TNT EXTRA!
Terror struck India on
December 13 when five gunmen entered the
Parliament complex. See exclusive infographics,
pictures and shootout updates. Read The
Extra!
COLUMN
The six Nobel Prizes for 2001 had
an unusual triple Indian connection, says
Jairam Ramesh. Read The
Opinion
Enduring blames:
Soul-searching after September 11
San Jose, California,
January 12, 01:58 (2002)
The strident anti-US positions taken by
Arundhati Roy and others of her ilk in the wake of the
September 11 attacks betray a great ignorance of what
the US stands for -- and the terrorists stand against.
Her eloquence and passion notwithstanding, Ms Roy's
essays make sweeping judgements that do not stand up to
critical scrutiny.
(This is the concluding part of a five-part series
on anti-US critics by two readers of TheNewspaperToday.
We will continue to showcase thought-provoking work by
our readers -- Executive Editor)
ON CRITICS
AND THEIR WORLD VIEW
In our previous articles we responded to various
criticisms from Ms Roy and others that were directed
against the US government and its economic and foreign
policies. Ms Roy pointed out how manipulation of "huge,
raging human feelings" for "narrow purposes may yield
instant results, but eventually and inexorably, they
have disastrous consequences." She adds how "every
religious text…can be mined and misinterpreted to
justify anything, from nuclear war to genocide to
corporate globalisation."
Is Ms Roy doing anything different from what she
gratuitously accuses the Taliban and the US of doing -
i.e., generating one-sided, self-centered monologues,
from selectively mined and misinterpreted data, to
portray a picture of reality that she finds desirable?
On top of this she feels that "freedom - that precious,
precious thing - will be the first casualty" as a result
of what the US has started in terms of surveillance post
September 11.
Perhaps Ms Roy is unaware of a self-contradiction
in her own tirade. For she says, "before September 11,
the CIA had accumulated more information than is humanly
possible to process." The underlying presumption is that
surveillance has always been present (at least in the
US) - hence, the civil rights issue ultimately is in how
exactly the surveillance data will be used.
In any case, we would just ask Ms Roy and all
those critics who would write off freedom within the
United States now to brush up on their history lessons.
The US media, citizens and Constitution are powerful
enough to prevent the US Government from turning into a
perpetual inward spy; and they must continue to have a
vested interest in preserving the free speech and
democracy that has made their country what it is.
Ms Roy also asked "….shall we stare unblinking at
the grim theatre unfolding in Afghanistan until we retch
collectively and say, in one voice, that we have had
enough?" All we can say is if the voices remained
persistently retching and loud against Saudi Arabia and
other countries in the Middle-East when they asked for
US military support during the Gulf War, against Mr
Saddam Hussain and Iraq's citizens when he generously
asked for and used American help in his war with Iran,
against Mr. Osama bin Laden's Mujahideen and the Afghan
citizens when they splurged US money for their own
benefit against the former USSR, and against EVERY OTHER
country or group in the world and their citizens who at
ANY TIME received funds from the US for some thing or
the other, THEN perhaps the voices and the stench from
the collective mass worldwide floods of retching would
have some respect and would be worth heeding.
To not make too fine a point, here is the message
we seem to be getting from the U.S. haters: "Let us get
rich buying stocks of US companies, selling tons of oil
or books or software or anything in between to the US
(the world's biggest economy), move to the US to profit
or enjoy a free life (or kill some civilians), or use US
goods or services for our own benefit, and let us then
claim we are much better than to associate with the US
or its people.
Let us also accept aid and charity from one of
the world's biggest donors (in $ terms) and spit on the
faces of its citizens saying they don't care about us or
anyone else in the world. And let's do all this every
day as a way of "gently informing" the people of the
United States to "wake up" and grasp why the killing of
American civilians may be understandable in the
historical context." This is the message we would have
to assimilate and disseminate if we brand America to be
no different from the perpetrators of the September 11
acts - as Ms Roy has so eloquently summarised. We would
not be able to stop there either - we would be also
compelled to show solidarity with all those governments
which stress how their civilians are "innocent" and
therefore need to be treated gently by Americans
attacking their country while American civilians are not
and deserve to be slaughtered or treated in a cavalier
way.
ON SOUL-SEARCHING
Like Ms Roy, we certainly believe the United
States and its citizens are due for some soul-searching
in the aftermath of September 11, to understand why they
are hated by many people and nations in the world, but
it appears to us (as we have shown in our four previous
articles) that journalistic and jingoistic obscurantism
parading under the guise of objectivity is undoubtedly
one of those factors. Moreover, journalistic freedom to
criticize is freely exploited to deliver repeated
one-sided diatribes, offering no practical solutions to
the problem.
The latter is naturally a result of missing
objectivity and lack of detail in one's analysis or
thinking, which is especially bothersome because it is
the plague of "high-level solutions" or "corrections"
that continues to preserve the specter of misery and war
in the world. Regardless, we suggest below some
relatively straightforward imperatives for the United
States and its citizens, to emerge stronger from the
trauma of September 11.
PROMOTE PEACE
As a leading Democratic country, it is essential
for the United States to indeed promote long-term peace,
through concerted peace efforts. As much as one might
like to think that military power can achieve what
peaceful discussions or negotiations cannot, that is not
always the case and is also not always desirable. There
are cases where support for non-violent movements or
approaches can bear an even greater return.
SUPPORT DEMOCRACY AND FREE SPEECH
WORLDWIDE
The United States is known for its support for
democracy within its borders but it has also supported
non-democratic Governments or leaders outside. While we
are realistic in understanding there is only so much one
can do to influence what other countries or Governments
do inside their borders, it would greatly help the
United States and its people if the U.S. adopted a
policy of only supporting and encouraging Democratic
governments from the outside.
At the minimum, countries that have shown a big
commitment to democracy should be rewarded, recognized
internationally, and relationships with those
governments be strengthened considerably, even if the US
does not always see eye-to-eye on every issue with those
countries (that is a true commitment to the
philosophical underpinnings of democracy). Secondly, if
the US has to align itself with non-democratic nations
(as democracy is not the only philosophy chosen by the
citizens of the world), at least there should be a
concerted effort to not provide any military aid to such
nations.
Free speech is one of the most fundamental rights
that the US has treasured and it must continue to do so
forever. Openness and tolerance in the government are
key to ensuring long-term support for the US - now and
in the future.
Text
of Musharraf's Address to the Nation President Musharraf in his
address to the nation reaffirmed to rid the
society of terrorism and strived to project Islam
in its true perspective.
